Growth in custom metal fabrication: Staying small while getting big

S&B Metal Products specializes in stainless steel fabrication. Photo courtesy of S&B Metal Products.

Drive by a major manufacturing plant next to an interstate and you can appreciate just how large some of those buildings really are. They seem to go on for miles—and that’s because they do. And you can bet it’s probably an automotive OEM or upper-tier supplier, perhaps an appliance plant, maybe a heavy equipment assembly operation. But it isn’t likely to be a custom metal fabricator.

The FAB 40 represents a cross section of some of the industry’s largest shops. That statement might seem odd to someone not familiar with fabrication; after all, this “large shop” list ends with companies that have less than $20 million in revenue. But that’s large for the custom fab world. Many companies on the list operate much like their smaller cousins. They grow not in one giant building or campus of buildings, but by opening numerous smaller plants. Why? Ease of management plays a role, as does being close to customers and prospects. Metal fabricated products may start as 1s and 0s in a CAD file, but they don’t end up that way. Physical products need to be shipped, so, of course, location matters.

MEC, the largest company on the FAB 40, has grown into what it is today by opening and acquiring numerous, relatively small plants. So have many others on the list, including S&B Metal Products, a custom fabricator with a story that will be familiar to many in this sector. It has its roots in a local community, with friends who decided to build a business.

S&B has grown into a $20 million enterprise, but it did this not by growing into one large plant but four smaller ones—facilities that, from a size perspective, at least, look like any other small fab shop.

To dig deeper, The FABRICATOR spoke with Brent Cessna, S&B’s general manager, about how the company was founded, how it grew, and its greatest challenges ahead.

The FABRICATOR: How did S&B Metal Products get its start?

Brent Cessna: It was founded in 1974 by two people, Chuck Sterling and Paul Balliette, who met at church. They were working separate jobs, both in the metal industry, and they got together at church one day and asked, “Why don’t we join forces and try to start a company?” Sterling passed away in 1986, but Balliette is still the principal owner.

The shop operated in Twinsburg, Ohio, for years. Then in 1986, drawn by warmer weather and the fact that there weren’t many fabricators in the area, S&B opened another shop in Lakeland, Fla. With all the theme parks in Florida, there was definitely a need for fabrications. In 1998 S&B opened another shop in Bradenton, Fla., and then in 2002 it opened up shop in Daytona Beach. So we really cover right across the middle of the state.

Today, when you visit the theme parks, you can see our work. See a topiary shaped like a popular cartoon character? We probably fabricated the metal structure underneath. When you wait in line and board a ride, you’ll see guarding and other components. Some of that probably came from us too. We don’t fabricate the rides themselves, but we do a lot of the subcomponents that go into them.

The FABRICATOR: What were these new plant locations like? Were they mirrors of the original plant in Twinsburg, or were they different?

Cessna: Each shop is the mirror of the first one [in Twinsburg, Ohio]. They all have the same basic capabilities. They all run lasers, punch presses, and press brakes. Our core competency really is stainless steel welding, at least at three of our four facilities. The Daytona plant doesn’t do quite as much stainless steel work as the other three do. The Daytona plant focuses on steel frames and other structural work, but they do have some capabilities to fabricate our smaller stainless jobs.

Our Bradenton facility is 60,000 square feet; it’s the biggest of our four plants. Overall, though, our ownership likes to keep the plants small; we’re talking between 15,000 and 40,000 sq. ft. We prefer this rather than opening one large plant and trying to manage it all. When you have a small shop, you can really perfect your core competency and keep the operation humming along.

Each plant has identical machines and the same welding equipment. If a person wants to transfer from Twinsburg, Ohio, to Lakeland, Fla.—and this has happened—he can make the move and be operating the machine in Florida, as if he never made the move.

Within the next three years, we’re looking to open another small plant in the South—Tennessee, North Carolina, or South Carolina—where we can bridge the gap between Ohio and Florida.

The FABRICATOR: When these new locations were opened, was having such similar operations a strategy from the start?

Cessna: It was more of a natural evolution, really. When the founders opened a shop in Ohio, they got very good at fabricating stainless steel, serving the food processing and beverage industry. When the company expanded into Florida, it targeted industries that needed similar work. We just became really good [at stainless fabrication] early on, and we just carried on that core competency as we expanded.

Stainless steel fabrication led us to the pet care and veterinarian business. Those tubs, baths, and lifts are all stainless steel. A key customer of ours for our Bradenton plant came to us looking to partner with us, and we’re now making the PetLift line of products. We recently hired a new general manager for that business, and he’s already done a good job growing what was already a great company.

Most recently we’re expanding into the pharmaceutical industry, and that kind of work also fits our team very well. And we’re now moving some of that work down to Bradenton. Once a shop latches on to something and starts to excel, we spread that capability to the rest of our facilities.

The FABRICATOR: Considering your focus on stainless steel, what is the story behind some of your best hires?

Cessna: We put out ads, go through head hunters, post online, and do all the typical things any fabricator would do. But most of our hiring success stories come from recommendations from our current employees. Such a recommendation carries a lot of weight for us, as long as the prospect has a base of knowledge we can work with.

The FABRICATOR: Define “base” for a welder of stainless steel. What exactly are you looking for?

Cessna: If we go through a head hunter or another employment service, a candidate comes in the door, and we set them up for a few different welding tests. The first thing he needs to do is turn the machine on and set it for the thickness of stainless he’ll be welding. Sometimes we’ll have recent welding school graduates, people with three or four different welding certifications, and—I’m not kidding—they have trouble turning the welding machine on properly. And we’re running your standard [gas tungsten arc] welding machines that you’re likely to see in any weld shop.

If they can turn the machine on properly, we’ll have them weld some butt joints and weld in the vertical-down position. The welds may have some porosity, and they may not be as straight or neat as we would like it. But as long as they can follow directions and lay down a halfway decent weld, that’s what we’re looking for. That’s what I mean by having “a base” to build from. If they have that base, then we can work with them, stick them with the older guys, and bring them up to be an S&B welder.

The FABRICATOR: What are your greatest challenges moving forward?

Cessna: We’re of course keeping a close eye on material pricing and working with customers when we need to. Most have been receptive to it. Everyone’s onboard with what’s going on. It’s a concern, but all of this didn’t come out of the blue. We’ve prepared for it.

Then of course we have the challenge of finding people. We’re having a tough time here in Ohio, more so than in our Florida facilities, just because we’re in the industrial north. We have more manufacturing here [in Ohio] and more companies vying for quality candidates. We have a difficult time finding them, and once we have them, we have to work hard to keep them. We pay a good salary and have good benefits and a nice working atmosphere. Put simply, we employ good people who are fun to work with. We pay close attention to that, because once you lose good people, they’re difficult to replace.

S&B Metal Products, www.sbmetal.com.